eLearning Courses for Online Safety Training

Online safety training can come in many forms. For example, it may mean watching a one-time, “live” webinar or a recorded, on-demand version of that webinar. Or it may mean watching a video online.

But another thing it may mean is watching and completing one or more elearning courses.

eLearning courses are unique animals because they allow for a lot more interactivity, including but not limited to online practice quizzes and scored online tests, than you can get with an online video or a recorded webinar, for example.

Another aspect of an eLearning course is that they’re delivered through a learning management system, also known as an LMS. That combination of eLearning courses and an LMS gives a lot of additional power and flexibility.

Below is a list of just a few of the topics eLearning courses on safety and health can cover. Of course, you’d select courses to match your specific needs.

We’ll call out some of the notable features in the various images to show some of the strengths of eLearning as we look at these samples.

Forklift Safety eLearning Course

In this image from a forklift safety elearning course, notice the powerful illustration of the stability triangle, something that’s difficult to explain in real-life or video.

Want to see how that still image above of the forklift stability fits into the eLearning course it’s from? Here’s a one-screen sample of the course, below.

Compressed Gas Cylinder Safety eLearning Course

This Compressed Gas Cylinder Safety course can illustrate the hazards of a gas cylinder in a way that you can’t do in real life, and wouldn’t do in video either. But watching the cylinder shoot through a brick wall is an effective way to show employees the danger of a compressed cylinder missile hazard.

As before, here’s a one-screen sample of the Compressed Gas Cylinder Safety elearning course that the image above was taken from.

Back Injury Prevention eLearning Course

Here’s a one-screen sample of the Back Injury Prevention elearning course that the image above was taken from.

eLearning Courses and ROI of Health and Safety Training

Now that you’ve seen a few examples of eLearning courses you could use in your own health and safety training program, let’s look at some ways they can positively affect the ROI of your health and safety training program.

We’ve listed five reasons why the use of eLearning courses within your blended learning health and safety training program can help your bottom line. Again, we’re sure there are more as well.

First, there are times when an eLearning course delivers training more effectively any other training medium. For example, some training concepts are abstract and workers can struggle to understand them just from listening in on a lecture or reading a book. Humans are largely visual creatures, and much of what we learn comes from our eyes. eLearning is ideal for taking advantage of this, especially for certain topics–check out this list of 25 graphic design techniques for effective eLearning for some examples.

Second, eLearning gives your learners more control and flexibility. eLearning delivered online lets your worker choose when and where they want to complete that training. This means each employee can take at least some of his or her health and safety training via elearning when it fits their work schedule–such as during slow periods at work. And that saves money you’d spend pulling all workers off the line for group training session.

Third, there are times when elearning is simply the most cost-efficient way to deliver training. This is especially helpful if the training topic isn’t especially complex or if it’s largely information-based, such as a new policy. And this is even more important if you’ve got a workforce that works different shifts or is spread out in various locations.

Fourth, it’s easier to provide “just-in-time” training to individual workers via eLearning and an LMS than it is via instructor-led training. You probably realize it’s best to provide training to people just before they’ll need the training for their job. But when you’re using only instructor-led training, it’s hard to deliver training to all workers at a large site on a timely basis. eLearning courses, delivered through an LMS, make that a lot easier, saving you a lot of money in the process.

Fifth, eLearning courses are easier to use repeatedly for refresher training. Studies show that “one-and-done” training isn’t as effective as training with frequent refresher sessions. eLearning courses provide an especially easy and cost-effective way to provide this kind of training.

Making Your Own Health & Safety eLearning Courses

Something that not all people know, and that’s worth calling out, is that you can make your own eLearning courses pretty easily. This means you can create custom, site-specific eLearning courses directly tailored to all your health and safety training needs.

That’s great if you’re in charge of health and safety training at a site. But it pays off even more if you’re creating health and safety training at an enterprise level for many sites. You can create some “universal” health and safety training that applies to all sites, and then allow site-level safety personnel to supplement that with their own site-specific materials. That way your site-level safety people aren’t continually creating the exact same training materials over and over again (by making one copy per site). And that can be a big savings once you consider all the health and safety training topics there are.

Want to know more about creating your own eLearning course? Here are some helpful resources:

Online Safety Training Buyer’s Guide Checklist

Jeffrey Dalto is an Instructional Designer and the Senior Learning & Development Specialist at Convergence Training. He's worked in training/learning & development for 20 years, in safety and safety training for more than 10, is an OSHA Authorized Outreach Trainer for General Industry OSHA 10 and 30, has completed a General Industry Safety and Health Specialist Certificate from the University of Washington/Pacific Northwest OSHA Education Center, and is a member of the committee creating the upcoming ANSI Z490.2 national standard on online environmental, health, and safety training.